Sunday, March 10, 2013

As Eight Candidates Vie to Be Los Angeles’s Next Mayor, Voters Tune Out

Unless a candidate breaks 50 percent Tuesday, the two top contenders will face off May 21. “The expectations are it is Greuel and Garcetti in the runoff,” says Jessica Levinson, an associate clinical professor at Loyola Law School. “It is their ability to raise money, get endorsements, and garner independent expenditures on their behalf. They’re gathering the lion’s share of both.”

Garcetti, a Navy reservist and Rhodes scholar who served as council president between 2006 and 2012, is running as “a big-picture visionary,” says USC’s Schnur. His pitch is “I am going to create jobs and get the city moving,” adds Levinson.

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[Re Greuel] “Her connections with the business community are probably better than any of the candidates’,” says Levinson.

Although Perry has been called a champion for local business interests, supported dozens of housing projects in the downtown core that led to a steady flow of jobs, and did more for Skid Row residents than any councilperson before her has done, she has had difficulty raising money and has been battered by attack ads from Greuel over long-ago financial problems. Perry admitted that she filed bankruptcy twice 20 years ago, but blamed the bulk of the problem on her former husband’s law practice.

“She has been fairly anemic in terms of fundraising,” said Levinson. “The name of the game in politics is fundraising prowess, and she hasn’t been able to match Greuel and Garcetti.”